There's a common affliction suffered by baseball pitchers and corporate managers alike, a tendency that derails many careers, perversely, just when things couldn't be going any better. It's called "pitching too fine" in baseball, and if you're a fan, you know how heartbreaking it can be.
What happens is that a pitcher begins a game with good stuff. As the innings progress, he discovers that his control has never been better, his mood never more serene and implacable. Wherever he wants the ball to go, whatever the speed, makes no difference; it obeys him as if it were an extension of his thoughts.
Soon, a sense of overwhelming well-being overtakes him. Afterward, a baffled and stunned pitcher will talk as if he had experienced rapture of the deep, that fatal intoxication that strikes scuba divers when they descend beyond a safe depth. "I was in complete control," he will say. "I don't know what happened."
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